Spanglish in Chronicle of Higher Education (and Yinglish)

[Peter Farruggio]

Just a quick comment on code-switching and Spanglish:  I don't think
they're the same thing, but of course "Spanglish" is a fuzzy quantity,
which could be considered by some to include some forms of code-switching,
I guess.  But there are code-switchers who have good command of both
languages, and who follow Gumperz's formula of swittching between them for
rhetorical and psychological reasons, without using many bastardized loan
words.  I have found most "Spanglish" users to consider the hispanicized
English words to be real Spanish words (el buildin, el co (coat), etc)
because they don't know the official Spanish words.

Pete Farruggio





>Like Grant, I've only ever heard "Nuyorican" for New York-based
>Puerto Rican culture and people.  I'm surprised there's no reference
>in Stavans's piece to the rather voluminous body of knowledge on code
>switching; the author seems to have discovered the phenomenon
>independently.  I also wonder about his characterization of Yiddish.
>The characterization of "ebonics" (the very label is telling) as "an
>intraethnic slang" perpetuates a misunderstanding that could be
>debunked by spending five minutes on John Rickford's web site or
>glancing at any one of a fairly large number of publications on the
>topic.  Oh well--I shouldn't go on, I'm starting to sound snobby.
>
>By the way, on a related topic:  thanks to everyone who responded on
>Yinglish.  I did check with Ellen Prince and Jerry Sadock, whose
>names were brought up by a couple of people, and as I suspected
>neither of them knows of anything of the sort I was looking for:  a
>sound descriptive treatment in the form of a book chapter or article
>of the traits of Yiddish-influenced English, focusing on the
>grammatical patterns, comparable to what's available for AAVE and
>Appalachian English.  Well, I did determine that there would be a
>market for such a resource.  (Jerry and I tried to convince Ellen to
>write one, without noticeable success.)
>
>larry